Crawling into a new generation of consoles

It looks so beautiful....

The PS4 is awesome. The Wii U is awesome. The Xbox one.... is probably awesome, but I wont lie to you and pretend to know as I don't own one. However despite how awesome they are, in both features and just for being able to run some good games, I can't exactly say it feels like next generation is really here yet. Heck I've been trying to keep myself saying current generation, because its here and its current so fuck off with the "next generation" for 3 years nonsense like we had last time. However it becomes hard to not say next gen because that's what we're still hoping to see... and apart from visuals we're not seeing it yet. That excitement that comes to a new console era, that hope, that hype... it just wasn't quite what I expected. With Gearbox and FromSoftware also developing brand new games exclusive to the last generation, I suspect its not just a consumer thing on its own either. When it came to the Wii U, I was sold on the idea that something great was coming. Pikmin 3, 3rd party teams, and a potential tablet tied to console idea, and it would be nintendo's first time taking the internet a bit more seriously. Well I overlooked the fact that the 3rd games weren't ones I wanted, and apart from that none of the real hopes have come true yet and 3rd party has pretty much abandoned Nintendo faster than ever before. Meanwhile I wanted the PS4 because... well there was talk of greater things, but to be honest it was 80% for Killzone shadowfall. Now that paid off completely and I was just having a wide grinning blast with it online this morning, and AC4 is better on PS4 as well, but.... that and the PS+ meddling is all that I got with it. Oh and speaking of which, PS+ is more of a benefit to me as a PS3 and vita guy. The PS4 just finally kicked me to that end, so one of the best things to come out of the PS4 was how it made my past consoles better..... that's odd and a little telling of how slow this stuff is warming up.

The fanfare for next generation kind of went with a thud. It started with people panicking over typical hardware failures that were supposed to be expected, and then continued with arguments and fanboy wars with a surprising lack of talk on fun that usually comes to counter the hate. Meanwile the hype train to Dark Souls 2 was like an E-party, TitanFall got a lot of joy yet felt more accepted on PC than it did Xbox one and either way wasn't anything worth the exclusivity, and the PS4 and Wii U seem to break more worthy news on indie titles that were already going to PC than they are about big triple A games that the developers are supposed to be pushing. Even Infamous: Second Son, a big hype title and supposedly a system seller aiming to take the world by storm basically ended with an "oh cool, its a good Infamous game." by critics and gamers alike and people just sort of played it and fell silence. Oh and a Last of Us port for the PS4 was filling up the news as a big hot topic thing lately. I suppose that is to be expected as an exciting thing since its considered as the "best game ever" by so many, but heading into next gen with one of the biggest head-spinning topics being a quick port is still kind of a slap in the face to those expecting a big stepping stone instead.

So now you have Dark Souls 2 and a brand new recently announced Borderlands game aimed at older platforms. Why? Well because the hardware is very well, well established, supported, and people still love and play it.... a lot more people. It was more effective and efficient for those games to tie themselves to tried and true hardware. You know even though I sort of debate that back and forth as lazy, in the end I kind of respect the fact they aren't throwing costs sky high for everything. However they most certainly would enjoy using new hardware... if they had a real reason to. Thing is though we've hit if not passed the peak point of performance. It wasn't going to get much better (while staying efficient) in a traditional sense. The PS3 and 360 put out amazing visuals that could do practically any visual design effectively... even boring realistic ones look fine. So why would the borderlands team burn and throw money at a new console if the old one was just fine in every way?

Beautiful to, right?

Don't get me wrong, there is a set up and potential for next generation to take off. Indies are going to continue to make a good impact for starters... but then there's the better Ram that may go into some good use down the lines. Also at the risk of sounding contradictory, the two games in specific question have a bad history with Framerate. I'm not going to blame the last gen consoles as I've seen far better run way smoother, but still you could imagine they would actually improve with more room given. However until we see a golden game, a game that surprises people, and a game that uses the full power to create some new vision we couldn't quite comprehend, we wont be seeing next gen take off quite so fast. The Wii U has not been able to do that with just a convenient tablet function. The PS4 has not been able to do that yet with a tiny track pad addition or its power. The Xbox one has not been doing anything special yet with its "All in one" connectivity or its similar to PS4 grade power. Its just too basic to see the next generation fly out in colors this soon. The PC has a constantly expanding market full of too many new experiences to keep track of is actually looking more like the real next gen, and that's existing outside of such a cycle. Truth is though its got a lot of tempting bits as consoles have lost more ground to reason with beyond the obvious exclusives and out of the box controller support. Its not really much wonder as to why PC is seeing quite a good number of new people, and a lot of the intelligent chatter is held within the PC player side. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying consoles have no purpose, but its getting more and more difficult to say that as time goes on...

Again I'm going to restate that its good to see some new consoles out, and its nice to wonder what will come out of them. Soon I'm probably going to write a small list of my hopes in innovation with this upcoming generation. However for now, it just feels more quiet than expected. Actually... I'm kind of enjoying it a bit to. Setting aside the crappy nature of the resolution mess, the industry is kind of taking a bit of a backseat while gamers just figure out what's good to play. Less controversy, Less hyper hype (save for titanfall, which is thankfully taken heat for being overhyped), and its just a time to relax. I've been reading big news over the simple indie MOBA Awesomenauts and their starstorm update, and similar indie news from the big event that happened not long ago. Apart from that few other things have become strongly noticeable, and I'm just able to log out of news and play games like Okami and Killzone Shadowfall. It kind of reminds me of my disappointment with last year's GOTY contendors, I was having more fun with older games... but I didn't really care all that much, because it was still fun that way. This sort of thing happening on a bigger scale even provokes gamers to make up their own news stories and discuss personal opinions and potential innovation among themselves. You know what, Shadow Fall has been a blast, I have some games to catch up on with the Wii U, and I'm sure whenever I get around to Infamous it'll be great. If that's all we get alongside indies and these more peaceful feeling to the industry, heck I'll take it! :) I just wish the Wii U and Vita would just randomly pick up thousands of sales so people would stop shouting doom for no reason.